“Rest Stop Guy Cries & Pisses Himself” is the title of the borderline snuff film that 17-year-old Kiya has uploaded onto the Internet after an exhilarating experience holding a man at gunpoint in a convenience store. 500,000 followers later, she’s found a new kind of fame.

Social media brings people together and pulls them apart. It connects us in ways we never would have thought possible. But it’s important to remember that the way people’s lives are depicted on social media is WAY more interesting than their realities. They’ll go to great lengths to gain likes and followers, spending money on glamorous vacations and boob jobs and designer clothing to hide their actual isolation. In Like Me, Kiya takes a road less traveled.

Kiya (Addison Timlin) is a reckless loner who is desperate for human connection, and sets out on a bizarre, sadomasochistic crime spree that she films and broadcasts on social media that receives all types of feedback from every corner of the Internet. As she travels along the coast, she meets a hotel proprietor named Marshall (Larry Fessenden), who resembles a slightly scummier Jack Nicholson, whom she invites to her room with intentions of seduction. Willing to take the risk of having sex with a minor, Marshall is strapped to the bed and is force-fed Fruity Pebbles and Cheetos as Kiya films all of it–including when she makes him throw it all up, much to the outrage of the million people who see it online. They develop a sort of Stockholm Syndrome relationship, indulging heavily in drugs and Marshall’s apparent willingness to please Kiya’s sadistic behavior. But her reality quickly splinters into a surreal nightmare as her exploits spiral out of control.

“You’re just another fame-obsessed junkie trying to make the biggest splash you can, before you shit out a kid and die of cancer,” says Burt Walden (Ian Nelson), some asshole on YouTube who constantly tries to expose Kiya and her actions, despite looking like a serial killer in-training himself.

Nearly the entire film is a candy-colored acid nightmare punctuated by memes and stock footage, akin to the YouTube Poops you’d find in the nether regions of the Internet. It’s an apt representation of the nature of a sociopathic anti-heroine who gets off on attention, whether good or bad, and which she mistakes for human connection. Kiya represents some of the worst aspects of our generation, spiraling down a path of self-destruction in between hallucinogenic spurts of neon pinks and blues. And vomit. Lots of vomit.

The social media tale is nothing new, as it’s been engrained in our culture for quite some time. But the surreal adventure that is Like Me is more so a grotesque, trippy metaphor for the nihilistic outlook that has defined the millennial generation, an anarchistic crime and sex fantasy that would, no doubt, excite and thrill society’s criminal underbelly–though it’s passed through all our minds at one point. (Is it just me?) At times, the social media aspect is almost secondary when we come to the realization that Kiya isn’t just committing crimes for the pleasure of her 500,000 followers–she seems to genuinely take joy in the power involved with torturing the men that she knows will stay under her thumb.

Like Me makes you question who the real monster is: the person committing the crime, or the people who watch, like, and follow to give the criminal more motivation, and more fodder, for snuff entertainment.

Timlin and Fessenden deliver strong and convincing performances, and have an extremely good chemistry despite the disturbing relationship between their two characters. Neither is likable–hell, nobody in this film is what you could call “likable”–but you can’t help but feel sorry for two loners that are so isolated that their sadomasochistic relationship is better to them than nothing at all. The plot itself is strange and seems to evolve over time, moving along by Kiya’s spontaneous actions rather than structured beats. It’s a candy-coated, drug-fueled, female-led version of A Clockwork Orange updated for 2018, chock full of ultra-violent “what the fuck am I watching” scenes that are difficult to stomach, but it’s impossible to turn your head away.

Robert Mockler has made a visually dazzling, yet haunting, debut feature that drags us by the hair into the grotesque realities of a world defined by superficiality and fame, where the pressure to gain approval is enough to make you vomit.